Japan Births Hit 124-Year Low as Fertility Crisis Deepens in 2025

(MENAFN) Japan recorded the fewest births since records began in 1899, with just 671,236 babies born to Japanese nationals in 2025 — as the country's total fertility rate simultaneously sank to an all-time low, according to government figures released Wednesday.

The number of newborns fell 2.2 percent, or 14,937, from the prior year, while the fertility rate — measuring the average number of children a woman is expected to have over her lifetime — slipped a further 0.01 percentage points to 1.14, according to data from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Both indicators declined for the tenth consecutive year.

Perhaps most alarming for policymakers, the collapse is arriving far ahead of schedule — approximately 15 years earlier than demographers had projected. The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research had estimated as recently as 2023 that Japanese births would not fall into the 670,000 range until the 2040s.

On the mortality side, deaths declined for the first time in five years, dropping by 15,889 to 1,589,489 — a shift attributed in part to a reduction in COVID-19-related fatalities.

Despite that development, deaths continued to vastly outpace births by 918,253, extending Japan's unbroken streak of natural population decline to 19 consecutive years.

The figures follow a similarly grim milestone recorded in 2024, when Japan logged approximately 686,000 births — the first time the annual total had fallen below 700,000 since records began 126 years ago.

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